Wicked Choices are Fueled from Wounded Places and False Identity

The stuff that we do which is unhealthy and wicked doesn’t have to be our story. We can exchange our depravity for holiness by grace. Jesus will accommodate that exchange where we offer up our will for His. First, we have to consider ourselves and ask Him to show us the things that aren’t His best for us. In the video that I made accompanying a blog the other day, I referenced Psalm 139:23-34, which is: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.”

We can ask the Lord to search us to see if there is any wicked way in us and He will lead us from it. Not a bad idea as wicked ways produce destructive results. Sometimes we’ll fool ourselves and think we are right when we are wrong. His whisper of truth is a course correction that will save us from difficult consequences.

The original word which is translated as “wicked” means, “1) pain, sorrow and 2) idol.” So we can understand the prayer of Psalm 139 to mean we want God to search us and show us any painful, sorrowful or idolatrous way within us. This is a great clue into the function of our soul.

Where there is wickedness in our will (behaviors), there is a reason for it. Our wicked choices are driven by our broken soul. If we examine our wicked ways and ask the Lord to show us, He will often take us to a lie that we are believing. From that lie, we are making bad choices. If we’ll continue to ask Him, He will often show us a wound the lie took root in. Somewhere along the way, something hurt us and we believed a lie about us and/or God that led us to self-protect from getting hurt again. If we get to the hurt, it can be healed. It it’s healed, the lie has no place to fester.

When we believe a lie that comes from a wound, we promote ourselves to god over that area of our lives. We reject the protection and provision of God and determine that we are better as god in that area. We don’t risk the vulnerability of hurt again to his protection and we self-protect figuring we can control it better than He did. That will result in increasingly depraved choices and difficult consequences. The spiral of depravity has begun.

“Search me, O God” will take us as deep as we are willing to go. If we’ll trust Him to show us, He will not only exchange His will for ours, but He’ll heal the hurt that led us to the place of making ourselves idols over those areas of our lives in the first place.